The Search for One True Love, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. All idols disappoint because you're made for God. That's why I tell you the arms you've been searching for in romance are His arms. The security you're looking for in a job or in money, that security is found in His promise. The fulfillment that you're searching for in all your pursuits is found in the glory of His presence. That's why Saint Augustine said our hearts will always be restless until we find our rest in you. Welcome to another week of trusted biblical teaching here on Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. There's no doubt that our culture tells us that one of the keys to being happy is finding your soulmate. We see it in movies, on TV, and on social media. But when our marriage gets rocky, we start looking for something else to fill us up, a career or kids or even a hobby.

But sadly, those things will never truly satisfy either. Today, Pastor J.D. points us to the only source of lasting joy as he continues our series called The Whole Story. If you missed any of the previous messages, you can catch up online at jdgreer.com.

Right now, here's Pastor J.D. in the book of Genesis. Genesis 29, if you've got your Bible open there, Jacob finally has gotten to Haran where his uncle Laban lives.

So he comes up to the village where his extended family lives, and he slumps down on this big old rock covering the well there. There she comes walking up, Rachel, the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. They meet, and they get to talking, and it turns out that not only is Rachel really pretty, but they're first cousins. This is the Old Testament, baby.

And in the Old Testament, being cousins with somebody was actually a turn on. So Jacob says to Laban, I want to marry my first cousin, Rachel. And Laban says, well, you know, I mean, we're related and everything, but you still got to pay some kind of broad price. So Jacob volunteers, I'll work for seven years to get her. Verse 18, Laban knows a sucker when he sees one, so he agrees, and Jacob works for seven years.

The seven years are up. Verse 21, and so Jacob comes to Laban and says, I have fulfilled my contract. Now give me my wife so we can be married. Well, it comes time for the ceremony.

She's wearing, of course, the traditional veil, which covers not only the face, but the whole head. They go through the ceremony, and Jacob is so happy that he really pounds down the booze at the reception. And after the party, he takes his veiled wife back to his tent, and they spend their first night together. Verse 25, and Jacob awoke the next morning, and behold, it was Leah.

Behold, indeed, it was Leah. Jacob goes back, of course, he's furious, and he says to Laban, what's the deal? Laban says, oh, yeah, it's just, it's not the custom in our country to marry off the younger before the older. Now, I've always wondered why Jacob didn't say back.

Well, that would have been a great point to make. Seven years ago, Jacob does not so much as offer a single word of argument. Why not?

Why not? Just like Isaac had reached out in the dark thinking it was Esau, and Jacob deceived him. So Jacob has now reached out in the dark for Rachel, and Laban has deceived him. The deceiver has been deceived.

Do you see it now? Jacob is wrought face to face with who he is. He's so obsessed with Rachel, however, that not even this can deter him. So he gets Laban to agree that if it'll work for another seven years, then he'll get Rachel as his wife too.

Graciously, Laban gives Rachel to him right away instead of making him wait the seven years. So in the space of one week, he's gotten two sisters as wives, who one is extremely jealous of the other one. What kind of house do you think that yielded for, Jacob?

I want you to think about this though. How bad must this have been for poor Leah? Which is why verse 31, the narrative switches to her. Verse 31, but because Leah was unloved, the Lord let her have a child.

While Rachel was childless, so Leah became pregnant and had a son. She named him Reuben, which in Hebrew means see, a son. For she said, the Lord has seen, he has noticed my misery, and now my husband will love me.

Do you think it works? Well, look at the very next verse, verse 33. She soon became pregnant again and had another son. She named this one Simeon, which in Hebrew sounds like the word heard. For she said, the Lord has heard that I was unloved and has given me another son. So did the one son make Jacob love her? No, because she's still unloved in this verse, right? So she's thinking the first son didn't work, but now the second son it'll work. God has heard my misery and God has answered my prayer by giving me a son that'll make Jacob love me.

You think it works the second time? All right, well, keep reading verse 34. And again, she became pregnant and had a son. She named this one Levi, which is the Hebrew word for attached. Because she said, surely now my husband will feel attached to me.

He'll feel affection to me since I have given him now three sons. Do you see what's going on? Just like Jacob, she is dealing with her disappointment in life by reaching out for that one true love also. When we deal with disappointment in life, we almost always respond the same way, right? Well, I didn't find it in that romance. So it'll be the next romance. That's what it'll do it. That'll make my life complete. Not in this job.

Oh, but I know if I get another job, then my career will feel complete and then I'll be happy. We're just like Leah. We keep having sons and thinking that one more son is going to solve the problem, but it always ends up the same. And then in verse 35, we get the gospel. Once again, she became pregnant and she had another son. She named this one Judah, which means literally praise to God for she said, now I will praise the Lord. In other words, Leah stopped trying to earn the love of Jacob through having sons and receive the love of God that was given to her as a gift. And that became the source of her joy and the source of her praise in life. Here's what's more Judah is going to grow up to be the ancestor of a very important great, great, great, great, great grandchild. Jesus is going to be referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah.

This would be the son through whom Jesus Christ himself would come. In other words, listen to this, her lineage became beautiful. Not because she had some physical beauty to pass onto them, but because God gave beauty as a gift in giving Jesus. So right in the middle of this painful, ugly, unloved life, Leah learns the gospel. She gets it a long time before Jacob, the famous patriarch is going to get it. She gets it first and she probably gets it better than anybody in the book of Genesis has gotten it up to this point because she embodies the whole message of the Bible. And I would say it's fourfold the things you can learn from Leah's experience with the gospel here. Number one, number one, in all of our searching, we are searching for Jesus and all our searching, she shows us we're searching for Jesus.

Every person is on a search and whether they know it or not, they're searching for Jesus. Both Jacob and Leah are on a search. Jacob thinks his answer is in riches and sex and he'll do whatever to get them. For riches, he will alienate his family and destroy those relationships.

To get love, romantic love, he'll pay whatever price. Leah thinks that her answer is found in being a mom and a wife. One commentator said that Jacob is the liberal who thinks sex will fulfill him.

Leah is the conservative who thinks family will fulfill her. Both liberal and conservative in this story end up empty because both are trying to fill the void in their heart through what we call an idol or a substitute God. I've explained before that one of the words for worship in Hebrew is the word chabod and chabod literally means weight. So you worship something when you give it an extraordinary amount of weight in your heart. When there's something in your life that you feel like has so much weight that you couldn't be happy without it, at that point you've begun to worship it. That's why we say that idols are not usually bad things. Idols are usually good things. They're good things like marriage and sex and friendship and family and success even.

They're good things that you've given the weight of God things which then turn into bad things. So the question that it ought to make you ask about yourself is what in your life do you feel like you can't live without? What have you been almost obsessed with obtaining in your life?

Are you Jacob thinking it's going to be found in riches or in romantic love? Or are you Leah thinking it is found in family stability? Or maybe it's the respect of your friends. Maybe it's the praise of people. Maybe it's career stature.

Maybe it's money. I love how Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner summarizes the story. The words behold it was Leah are the very embodiment of all of man's disappointment with life. And this moment with Leah is a snapshot of the disillusionment man has experienced from the Garden of Eden onward. All the blessings of the world, in other words, turn out to be Leah's. No matter what you think is Rachel in the morning when you finally wake up it's going to be Leah. Every time you get into a new relationship. Every time you start a new job or a new marriage.

You have another kid. You think this is it. This will finally make my life complete. This is Rachel. You have what I call the Jerry Maguire moment. Oh this will complete me.

You complete me. I can assure you she looks like a Rachel now but in the morning when you see her in the full light of day it's going to be Leah. When you experience the inevitable disappointment of a broken tower or the inevitable disappointment from an idol you'll do one of four things.

You remember these? The first thing is you can blame the idol. You try to replace it with a new version of that idol. Well it's not that relationship. It's a new relationship. Kelly Clarkson, the original American idol.

See what I did there? After she made it big she got into this romantic relationship you know and part of her stardom that of course totally fell apart. You know lasted the average Hollywood relationship about six minutes and on her next album that came out she has a song about that destroyed relationship and the lyric of the song says I fell so hard because of you.

I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty because of you. Now I would expect that her third album would have been about a whole new focus in life. Oh no it's just about the next guy. Sometimes people will will switch idols like categories of idols. I saw a great illustration of this recently by Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift has a song that came out at the end of 2015 called Out of the Woods. The whole song is about a relationship that goes on the rocks. Well in the music video and you're like how is he seeing the music video?

No questions please. The music of the music video just ends and these words are on the screen as the music kind of fades away. She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything. As in this relationship turned out to be Aaliyah but in knowing myself that's where the real joy is.

That's where real fulfillment is. I got news for Taylor Swift. I found myself and it's not that pretty. I turned out to be Aaliyah because the one who has disappointed me most in my life is me. The one who has broken more promises to JD Greer than any other person in the world is JD Greer. In the morning you're going to turn out to be Aaliyah too.

Taylor Swift was like he's Aaliyah but I'm Rachel and I'm like nope you're Aaliyah too. All idols disappoint. All idols disappoint because you're made for God. That's why I tell you the arms you've been searching for in romance are his arms. The security you're looking for in a job or in money, that security is found in his promise. The fulfillment that you're searching for in all your pursuits is found in the glory of his presence.

So I say to Augustine said our hearts will always be restless until we find our rest in you. You can blame the idol. You can blame, I told you number two, yourself. Well something's wrong with me. I got to fix myself but that never worked.

You can blame the world and become a cynic and just try to you know medicate your through alcohol or through shopping or sex or pornography or whatever. You can realize the fourth option is that you were created for another world. See what this story shows you is that Jesus was the true bridegroom that Leah was seeking. He was the one who would give to Leah the unconditional love that she'd always craved. A love that went beyond physical attraction. A love that was not conditioned on anything.

A love that was deep and fulfilling. Jesus is the bridegroom that you are seeking also. Lonely insecure low-esteem single people become lonely insecure low-esteem married people because problems like loneliness and insecurity and low self-esteem aren't cured by another human being. They're cured by the love of Jesus Christ the Spirit of God because he's who created you. So that's what Leah's life shows us is that we're all in a search.

All of us. And we choose different things but we're searching for Jesus which leads us to number two. God gives his blessing. God gives his blessing not to those who strive but to those who receive it in faith. It's only when you stop trying Leah tells you.

It's only when you stop trying to earn God's and other people's love that you can be free. You see the gospel flips everything that we believe about love on its head. Jacob chose Rachel because she was naturally appealing but God chose Leah to bear the Messiah. Isaac chose Esau because Esau fit his definition of what he wanted of what he wanted his son to be. But God chose Jacob to be the one through whom the ultimate man would one day come. God's blessing does not come to those who earn it but to those who receive it by faith which is why the apostle Paul would summarize Jacob's life this way. This is Paul in Romans 9 talking specifically about Jacob.

You see it depends not on human will, not on exertion, not on the people who can play the best tricks, not on those who can have the most sons. It depends on God. God who shows mercy.

That's why Paul would rephrase that in Titus 3 5. It's not by works of righteousness that we have done. It is according to God's mercy that he saves us. It's a gift that he gives us. It is by grace we have been saved through faith and not even that's from ourselves. That's the gift of God.

It's not of works. It's not of our ability to have sons or be beautiful or extort our family or ruin our relationships. It's on God who gives it as a gift so that when it happens we will not boast.

We'll be overwhelmed with grace and we'll spend the rest of our lives responding to the grace of God. That can set you free because I'm telling you some of you and let me talk especially here to the ladies for a moment since this is specifically about Leah. All your life you've been captive to the Labans and the Jacobs in your life.

Voices that you depended on to tell you that you were pretty enough, that you were skinny enough, that you had value, that you had worth, that you were good enough. You got a heavenly father who set his love on you just because you're his daughter. His love is unearned.

His love is the love that you you yearn for which leads me to number three. Number three, God doesn't love us because we're beautiful. We become beautiful because he loves us.

Right? Leah. Leah didn't love her because she was beautiful. Her lineage became beautiful because God set his love on her.

I love how Sally Lloyd-Jones in the Jesus story book Bible summarizes the story. God doesn't need us to be beautiful so he can love us with all of his heart. We become beautiful because he loves us. He doesn't love us because we're valuable. We're valuable because he loves us. He doesn't love us because we're pure. His love purifies us. He doesn't love us because we're strong. We find strength through his unconditional, irrevocable love for us given to us in the cross of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther had a wonderful way of saying this.

You got to put your thinking cap on but it's awesome. The love of God does not find. It creates that which is pleasing to it.

In other words, God didn't look throughout the earth and say, oh he's got great talent. He's got good potential. Oh, her. She's got a good heart. She's been misunderstood but I think a lot about her. Oh, this person over here.

They got real talent. That's why I'm going to love them. God doesn't look at us and find anything that is lovely in and of itself. God's love creates that which is lovely. His love makes the unlovely lovable. So when you feel like a Leah, what that means is that you got to reflect. You got to embrace two things. Number one, that God has set his love on you unconditionally.

Conditioned not on how you perform or anything about you but conditioned on the fact that he has made you his daughter or son in Jesus Christ's purchase of you. I thought this week about when my oldest daughter was learning to walk. She's around the house and she's pulling up on everything and then she kind of plops down. So Veronica and I do what really, when you think about it, it's kind of cruel. She gets up there one day and we kind of move over like five feet away and not take like a Twinkie or something. I'm like, want the Twinkie? And she's looking at it and she's scared. And then so I'm like, want the Twinkie? And she leans her head toward the Twinkie and then gravity takes over. And I'm counting it. I mean, that's like three steps and she fell down, but she walked.

She walked. And I'm acting like it's the greatest thing that's ever happened. Oh, you're awesome. You're my girl. I love it. I've never known a dad who was like, two steps?

That's it? My kid's an idiot. No, you're celebrating it. And what happens in parenting is that love, that affirmation ends up becoming the strength, which gives them the ability to grow in things and like walk later. You've got a heavenly father that's not saying, let me see how well you walk that determines whether or not I love you. You've got a heavenly father whose unconditional love becomes a strength through which you can walk beautifully in any situation in your life. So the first thing I reflect on is that God loves me unconditionally. It's given to me as a gift in Christ. Second, I reflect on the fact that one day He's going to make my outside, He's going to make the outside match the beauty of the Christ He has put on my inside.

And that's not just like poetic language. 1 John 3, 1 says, beloved, we are God's children and what we will be exactly has not yet appeared to us. But one thing we do know is that when He appears, we'll be like Him because then we'll see Him as He is. What that means is that one day God's going to take all the ugliness from this life. Maybe it's physical ugliness.

Maybe it's moral ugliness. My temper, my pride, my jealousy. God's going to take all that. And one day He's going to take this Christ He's put on the inside and He's going to make the beauty of my outside match what He's put on the inside.

And I can't wait. I can't wait because He is not done with me. And it is not yet appear what I will be, but I know He's making me beautiful.

When you really grasp these truths, you let them seep into your soul. I'm telling you, you're going to be free, finally free of the addiction of the approval that you've addiction to the approval of others you've lived with. You'll be released from that captivity that you feel towards your spouse, depending on them for affirmation. You can finally let go of them as your lifesaver because Jesus will be your lifesaver. You will need them to feel like you're loved. You will need them to feel like you have worth because you'll have that in Jesus. And then for the first time in your life, you'll be free to actually love them instead of use them.

Which leads me to number four, the final one. You know you've learned the gospel when you stop striving to find love. The way that you know you've learned the gospel is when you stop striving to find love, when you rejoice in a love that you don't have to earn, a love that can't be taken away. When like Leah, your praise and your joy is no longer based on how many sons you have, or whether Jacob loves you, or how smart you are, how pretty you are, or how much money you have. Your praise is based entirely on the covenant relationship that God has given to you.

And it's the covenant that God gave to you that is the source of your joy and the source of your praise. Let me ask you a question. What does it take? What does it take to to use the words of Pastor Chuck? What's it take for you to get your praise on?

What's that take? What makes you come in here and feel? What makes you rejoice? Is it you had a great week, your marriage is going awesome, found out you're pregnant, you found out that you inherited a lot of money.

What is it that would make you just rejoice? Is it how many sons you have? Is it all these things? Or is it, I may not have any of these things. I might be poor. I mean, I have sons.

I might feel ugly. I might not have found the Jacob to love me. I might not have this thing that I've always wanted from my dad and my parents are not having, but I got you.

I got you. I got your unconditional love and you're better than fathers and you're better than sons and you're better than riches and you're better than a husband because in all my life, the thing I was searching for is I was searching for you. And my soul has rest and my life can be a Judah, which means the praise goes to God for his covenant and not a Reuben and it's not a Simeon and it's not a Levi that's dependent on how many sons I have or the prosperity that God has given me in my life. Y'all thank God for the beautiful story of ugly Leah because see that shows me that he loves ugly sinners like me.

It shows me it's by grace that I've been saved through faith. It wasn't because of JD Greer. It wasn't for me. It wasn't because of Leah. It was by grace.

He gave it as a gift. It wasn't in my works so that I'm not going to boast nor am I going to despair. I'm going to do what Leah did, which is I'm going to start to praise God for the grace and the gift that he gave to me. I'm going to sing with Leah, who probably didn't use these words, but sang the essence of the song that we love in the church, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved an ugly wretch like me. And for the rest of my life, I'll be responding to that grace and just saying thank you and I want to love like you and I want to give like you because of what you've given to me. And I'll say with John Newton who wrote amazing grace, I know one day when I've been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, I'll have no less days to sing God's praise than when I first begun. This lifetime is not going to be enough time to say thank you to God for the grace that he gave.

That paycheck is not going to be enough. I'm going to need 10,000 lifetimes, 10 billion lifetimes just to respond to the grace that God gave to those who were unlovable and unlovely and God said I'll make you lovable and I'll make you worthy because I'll give Jesus to purchase your soul and I'll bring Jesus Christ through you. Thank God for the beautiful story of Ugly Leah. Leah's story shows us that God loves ugly sinners just like you and me and we get to spend the rest of our lives praising God for that. The Search for One True Love. That's the title of our message today from Pastor J.D.

Greer. If you'd like to listen again, you can find the full sermon online at jdgreer.com. J.D., we're so thankful to be offering your newest book on prayer to our listeners this month. Can you tell us why exactly did you name this book, Just Ask? You know, I really wanted to capture the simplicity of prayer, Molly, because a lot of people really have a complicated relationship with prayer because like they have all these questions about is it changing God's mind and what about the sovereignty of God and am I saying the right thing and using the right phrases when the driving analogy that you find throughout Jesus's teaching in the Gospels is that we come to God like children to a parent, a loving parent.

And a loving parent, you know, my kids when they come to me, they don't think about anything. They just ask. They ask whatever is in their heart and while we want to grow in our maturity as we pray, we also want to have that childlike dependence, that rush toward our Heavenly Father. That's the heartbeat of true prayer and I was hoping to communicate that to this book. Ask for this newest resource when you give a gift today. When you donate to Summit Life, you're helping us stay on your radio station and online so that more people can dive deeper into the message of the Gospel with us in order to find the joyous, reckless, audacious faith that God calls us to. When you join that mission right now, we'd like to say thanks by sending you this brand new book by JD titled Just Ask.

Pastor JD answers a lot of common questions about prayer and gives a biblical perspective that'll get you excited about spending time with God. Ask for the book when you donate today. The suggested giving level is $25 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give at jdgreer.com. That's jdgreer.com. If you'd rather mail your donation, our address is JD Greer Ministries, PO Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 277-09. I'm Molly Vitovich. Tomorrow, Pastor JD's diving into the story of Joseph, giving us an important reminder of God's sovereign control in every situation. Be sure to join us Tuesday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.